How To: Schedule Your Tweets Without Scheduling [Review]

Staying on top of the Twitter game and keeping my followers posted throughout the week can sometimes turn into quite a hassle.

Most Twitter Clients such as HootSuite or TweetDeck offer features to schedule tweets individually, which I always found to be quite time-consuming and clunky. In order to overcome this issue and also to stop posting too many tweets at once, there is a new Twitter App I want to tell you about that I have been using extensively for the past weeks.

It is a nifty App called Buffer.

Using Twitter Buffer App I can put the same tweet or RT (retweet) into the buffer of multiple Twitter accounts ONCE and Buffer App will send them out to each account at a different time!

The super short description of Buffer App:

Making use of Buffer is very intuitive. All you do is throw a few tweets in your Buffer and Buffer App posts these tweets for you throughout the day.

How do I use it?

Here is a quick tour of Buffers’ features for you to see how it could help you:

1.) Adding Tweets to your Buffer

Whenever you find an article worth sharing, simply click the Buffer icon. Here is an example of what happens when I did this with Gail’s post:

Buffer a Tweet

I can edit the Tweet to say whatever I wish, click the green “Add to Buffer” button and Buffer App automatically sends out the next Tweet in my buffer at the interval I selected for each account.

2.) How did your Tweets do?

Knowing how well your Tweets have performed is key for any Twitter user. Buffer tells you the number of Clicks, Retweets, and reach your Tweets received. Here are some of my recent analytics:

Analytics for your Tweets

3.) When will I tweet?

By default Buffer tweets for you at Twitter Peak times every day. However you can always change your times, add more or delete them. At each time, one of your Buffered tweets will go out. These are mine:

Adjust your Timing

How can Buffer help me right away?

Creating consistency in your Twitter stream is more important than ever as the noise on Twitter is growing with its exponentially increasing user base.

The tricky part is that I always wanted it to be both timesaving and without flooding my followers with too many updates at once. Having my own account on a blast and contributing to more Twitter noise made me feel very uncomfortable.

This is where Buffer comes in. It allows you to add lots of tweets to your Buffer at once in a very time-consuming manner. These tweets are then tweeted well spaced out over the course of the day and don’t create an information overload for your followers.

Earn features on your Buffer account with referrals

As of this week Buffer has also published a new feature which allows you to invite friends in a super simple Dropbox-style manner. You can tweet or email your personal referral link to your friends and both you and your friends get additional spaces for tweets in your Buffer.

Wrap-Up:

Most users are familiar with Apps which schedule your tweets. Some of these are Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or SocialOomph. However Buffer is quite different for various reasons:

You don’t schedule each tweet individually, since you simply add to Buffer.

You are able to add tweets really quickly by using a browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Safari)

Buffer provides you with full analytics for your buffered tweets to track your impact.

I am using Buffer daily and throwing tweets into my Buffer whenever I like something has turned out to be a really fun thing to do.

How about you? What is your take on this App? Let me know your views below:

Comments

That is very convenient!
If you use this well, then you can just forget about planning and if it is the right time etc.
Just add things to your buffer when you see or think of something.
So easy.Danny would love you to read ..Poulan Pro PP446ET 8-Inch Gas Powered Pole Chain Saw

I have been using an app called AutoTweeterPro for sometime. It’s a small & very easy-to-use software, which tweets from my computer. I am using unlimited trial version,which is as good as free. Hope you will find this tip useful –http://bit.ly/autotweeterPro1

Great post! I just signed up for Buffer and filled it up with Tweets. So we’ll see what happens. I loved it though because it was so easy to set up. I’ve tried some of those other Twitter auto posters and they were just too difficult to understand and use. (I’m not techy at all). I went for the freebie offer first to see how much I’ll use it but I can already see myself upgrading on Buffer within the next couple of days.

With the buffer being used to delay posts so that followers aren’t bombarded with too many tweets, is there a ratio of the number of links to your own post versus outside content that you use? As opposed to just tweeting about your own content all the time.khaled would love you to read ..What Are Rhinestones

I used to with TweetMeme, Tweetly, TweetDeck but after reading this article I really like the Bufferapp. I am really thankful to growmap.com for give me latest ideas of social networking, specially in Twitter.

Hi Gail, I just caught up with this! I really like these guys, just had a Skype chat with Leon and he’s very enthusiastic as always, things are going great a Buffer! Excellent to see a couple of young guys doing so well, this kind of stuff is just what the UK economy needs and lots more of it! I notice some of my article is similar to your, I’d better change a few things, right?? How small the world is now!! Did I mention to watch out for the WordPress 3.1.1. update?? Gave me some issues!! All the very best, PeterPeter L Masters MCIM would love you to read ..Social Media suicide- Don’t become flat liners- back up your Blog or your dead!!

Indeed, really great and useful application – Buffer, I heard about it a few days ago from a friend of mine, also a user of this application. I consider that it’s really good and in my opinion it’s a ‘must-have’ (especially nowadays), in order to get Twitter fans, traffic, attention, this is defintely a ‘must-have’. I will start using it too, thanks for sharing your opinion about this app too. Great job!Adrian would love you to read ..Building a Barn Shed

I created my hootsuite.com account and sync to my twitter profile. I write all my tweets at one time and predetermine when those tweets go out. Hootsuite.com, are really cool tool in my twitter marketing.

Yes, I think Hootsuite really is a great tool to get all your Twitter efforts going.

In addition to your favourite Twitter client, you might want to check out Buffer for scheduling as you don’t have to schedule tweets individually, but you simply throw them into your Buffer and thats it.

Hi there, yes you are absolutely right, I have tried Hootsuite too before and it is an awesome Twitter Client. For scheduling I think Buffer really is a better choice. Definitely, give it a go and see for yourself :).

Excellent recommendation. I’ve been using timely.is to space out my tweets, it’s even more straightforward, drop in the tweet and tell it to post in the next 30 minutes or let timely.is choose. Great free service for those who just want to solve the problem of not overloading followers with tons of tweets at once. But Buffer sounds REALLY cool. I think I might be switching over because of the Chrome plugin and the ability to have tweets go out at peak times. The only thing that might hole me back is the lack of bit.ly support on the free tier.Chris Adams would love you to read ..Changes In Housing

I like tweetadder, which can also do a sort of a scheduling, although it’s different. you add a lot of tweets and then set to auto tweet them, in order or randomly, and set an interval… maybe 1 hour between tweets…Jake would love you to read ..Groom Wedding Speech

I really like the idea of getting easy access to statistics about how your tweets have performed. Not so sure about the scheduling and @buffering” beacause what I really like about twitter is the instant nature of it as a form of communication.Sarah would love you to read ..Recipease Brighton

The reason someone very active on Twitter would want to buffer tweets is so that we can reply to many close together but have those replies go out with time between them so we don’t flood the timelines of Twitter users who do not follow a lot of people.

While Twitter is in some ways “instant”, we are not all looking at the same tweets at the same time. Any tweet that comes to me @GrowMap I reply to the next time I am on Twitter. That could be within minutes, but it might also be hours later.

If twenty tweets came in since I was online and I answer them all I want the replies to go out gradually so they do not annoy my other followers. That is what buffer app does and why I have been trying for a long time to get others like CoTweet to offer that feature.

This is a great little tool I will check out. My main way to keep my twitter account active is to subscribe to many newsletters in my industry. Most of the articles have a tweet button. I’m sure I can incorporate both now. Thanks Leojames would love you to read ..Blogging Underground Rankings Traffic System

Oh man, Joel and Leo are going to think I’m a rabid Buffer stalker now, lol. This has got to be the third (fifth?) review of the Buffer app I’ve seen inside a week.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll happily say it again: I <3 Buffer!

It makes my Twitter duties so much more delightful and easy, and it really is so, So, SO much simpler than TweetDeck or Hootsuite. Not only that, but it's compatible with Chrome, which I also love. And I'm one of those app "purists." I can't stand downloading and installing tons of stuff onto my browser, but Buffer is so amazingly awesome that it's one of only 3 apps that I deemed worthy enough to install, next to Blog This! and WiseStamp.

Thank you so much, Delena, for dropping in and adding your thoughts on Buffer App. As soon as Leo told me what it did I said, “where have you been”. I’ve been trying to get other apps to add that functionality for a long time now.

Seems like today is Bufferapp day, just finished commenting on Daniel Snyder’s blog about his enthusiastic review of Bufferapp and, as a user myself, I can say only good things about it.
I am in contact with Joel and I am very excited to see what he plans for the platform, just waiting for it to become a stable presence in social media, good times ahead 🙂

I too was actually looking such tool where you don’t have to tweet manually. Once you saved your tweets it automatically send on your behalf at mentioned time. This saves lot of headache about tweeting and tweet time. Thanks for sharing such important tool. I’m going to download it now. 😉

Thanks for the post! Very helpful. I signed up for the buffer App and had it working in a few minutes. The only thing that threw me is having to download Chrome to use it. I usually use firefox for my daily work but switching over to Chrome to use the buffer app is no problem at all, just copy and paste the URL of whatever you are working on, very easy!

Oh, No problem at all if you are a Firefox user, as there is a bookmarklet you can use for Firefox. Hope that helps, as I think it is very important to continue with the workflow you have had before :).

You can access it simply by clicking on “goodies” when you are logged in.

But you failed to mention that over 5 buffers means you must subscribe to Buffer at a cost. Only five time slots per day are available in the free version, so you must be paying or you are getting comp’d. Still Buffer is an interesting approach. I have grown tired of all the multiple steps it takes to schedule a tweet in Hootsuite.